'Leaves of Grass,' Anyone? A Reading Room Returns to Bryant Park

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: May 27, 2003

In 1935, during the depths of the Depression, the Bryant Park Open-Air Reading Room was established in the backyard of the New York Public Library to engage the minds of the jobless thousands.

Now, during another economic crisis, and after an absence of 60 years, the reading room will return. Is this the dire omen of a new depression?

''The timing is coincidental,'' said Daniel A. Biederman, executive director of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, sponsor of the new outdoor library. ''But in a bad time, it's nice to have a good book, and a nice place to read it.''

That nice place will be available next month under a new name, the Bryant Park Reading Room. The free lending library will offer 700 books and 300 periodicals to park visitors, who can informally check the publications out with library volunteers.

''I think people will be enchanted by a reading room in the park,'' said Mary K. Conwell, director of branch libraries for the public library, which is providing its expertise. She said that in a time of budget-cutting, it is useful to remind the citizenry of the importance of libraries, ''for traditionally, libraries are used more in tough times, because people don't have as much money to buy books and do other things.''

The outdoor library, with books donated by publishers, will be set up in mid-June in a tranquil oasis to the east of the entrance at 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas. It will be under a stand of maple trees near the statue of the industrialist William Earle Dodge.

The original reading room opened in August 1935, and was a collaboration between the public library and the Parks Department. It was staffed by five paid librarians employed by the Works Progress Administration, under the supervision of the library. By its second summer, it had attracted 64,624 patrons.

''There were few rules and regulations,'' Ms. Conwell said. ''People signed a card in each book, left it with the librarians, then put the card back when they returned the book.''

The original lending library was something of a Midtown institution, called the ''book beneath the bough'' program. ''Photographs show people dressed for business,'' Ms. Conwell said. ''Maybe some of them were office workers, but others could have been among the newly unemployed. We'll never know how many of them were too embarrassed to tell their families -- the ones who would dress for business in the morning, then come to the park and read.''

An unsigned 1936 article in The New Yorker took note of ''the young lady librarians, as brightly officious as Mrs. Roosevelt,'' and said that they ''sit thumbing over cards at a white garden table protected by a green umbrella, or lovingly pat the books in the bookstalls, making sure they're still alphabetical.'' Among the most popular loaners, the article said, was ''John Brown's Body'' by Stephen Vincent Benét, and ''Red Bread'' by Maurice Hindus.

The reading room flourished through 1942, ''but in 1943 we were at war, the W.P.A. librarians weren't available, and many of the formerly unemployed patrons were part of the war effort,'' Ms. Conwell said.

The library suggested that the reading room be temporarily discontinued; the parks commissioner, Robert Moses, agreed, replying in a note: ''I think I understand the park library situation. As you say, we can open it again when the war is over.''

That never happened. But now, Bryant Park officials are conducting interviews for volunteers who will staff the reading room, three at a time, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. The great library next door will advise the volunteers and help them to refer readers to its collections.

In Maspeth, Queens, four rolling reading carts are being fabricated at NE & WS Metal Works Inc., and painted a greenish blue. The rainproof carts -- 4.5 feet tall and a yard wide, made from steel and aluminum -- will hold 700 books and 300 periodicals. They are being created with a $35,000 grant from HSBC bank, which has underwritten the reading-room effort.

Ignacio Ciocchini, the industrial designer for the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, said the new carts were inspired by photographs of the original reading room. ''We want the carts to look as if they always have been there,'' he said.

The carts will offer protection for the books at night and during inclement weather, as they can be locked and swathed in vinyl covers.

There will be no library cards -- and no shush-ing. ''I don't think we do that in libraries anymore, do we?'' said Ms. Conwell with a laugh.

The checkout system will be straightforward: books with red stickers -- expensive coffee-table art volumes and the like -- need not be signed for, but must be read on chairs within sight of the librarians. Books with yellow stickers may be read anywhere in the park, but people will have to show an ID, then put their names on a sign-out sheet.

And books with green stickers may be taken home and returned -- or substituted with any other comparable nonlibrary book that has been, Mr. Biederman said, ''gently read.''

Mr. Biederman does not foresee fierce competition for the books, although the park draws a crowd of 5,000 during a sunny lunch hour. ''We're thinking that we might draw 250 people a day.''

Predictions about theft greeted the initial outdoor library in 1935, but Ms. Conwell said that only 30 of about 900 books disappeared in that first season, including Emily Post's ''How to Behave Though a Debutante.''

Is there concern that present-day New Yorkers are less honest? ''Trust is the operative strategy in the park,'' Mr. Biederman said. ''Even our chairs and tables aren't locked up at night. And we are going to trust people not to take the books.''

Will books be checked out to homeless park visitors? ''We welcome everyone,'' Mr. Biederman said, ''as long as they follow the rules. Our strategy has always been to have such an overwhelming number of people in the park that they won't feel intimidated by the homeless.''

But why now? ''It's something that we've always wanted to do,'' Mr. Biederman said, ''and we were at last able to get around to it.''

''Already, there is a large group of readers in the park,'' he added. ''But you can never have too many. Reading is a perfect passive activity for a park that has 3,000 chairs in it.''

Photos: The area of the park under the maples near 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, where the outdoor library will be set up in June. (Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times); Andrzey Chludzinski works on one of the new rolling book carts. (Michael Nagle for The New York Times)(pg. B6); The clothes are quite different, but the park is much the same. It was the Depression when a free lending library last opened in Bryant Park, where it flourished until 1942. (Bob Leavitt)(pg. B1)

Correction: May 31, 2003, Saturday An article on Tuesday about the opening of an outdoor reading room behind the New York Public Library in Manhattan misidentified the trees at the site, near the statue of the industrialist William Earle Dodge. They are London planes, not maples.